From a startup to a high-tier project in 6 monthsXyro scaling story

How We Built a Community from Scratch a Year Ago, Went Through 6 Stages of Project Growth, Secured Investment from Animoca Brands, and Grew to a 2M+ Community… Or Simply – Our Case Study on Scaling the XYRO Partnership Project.

Introduction

A year ago, a startup founder with a small team of developers approached us with rough product sketches, an idea, and a concept for a future gamified trading platform. They requested to build and scale a community, guide it through different product stages, launch on Mainnet, and eventually release their token (TGE).

Over a year, thousands of hours of management and execution went into achieving these results:

1. From a small startup to a fully operational business with 20+ employees;
2. From basic prototypes to a live Mainnet generating $300K+ in revenue (Dune Analytics);
3. From 1 follower to:

• 250K+ Discord members
• 650K+ Twitter (X) followers
• 1.7M+ Telegram users

4. From small-scale collaborations to securing incubation by CMC Labs and gaining support from industry giants like Animoca Brands, Chainlink, and MON Protocol;
5. TGE launch with +475% growth.

Project Stages

1. Early Bird Stage (Jan–Feb 2024)

We often refer to this as the project's first phase, when the community is built entirely from scratch. During this stage, we attracted around 10K members.

2. From Early Bird to Closed Alpha Test

At this stage, we gathered 200+ core testers, forming a dedicated OG community with special roles.

3. From Alpha to Free Mint for Beta Access

We scaled the community using various growth mechanics, including a series of contests with daily/weekly engagement mechanics and a guild rivalry competition directly on the server, along with collabs with Arbitrum projects. When the free mint launched, we had 40K engaged members. The mint itself resulted in 5K+ NFTs of varying rarity, with an impressive 86% unique ownership rate.

4. From Beta Test to Testnet

By this point, we had grown our social presence significantly:

• Twitter (X): 80K+
• Discord: 65K+
• Telegram: 25K+

During this stage, we also focused on wallet connections, setting a KPI of 30-40K+ participants. The strong traction from the Beta Test allowed us to secure investment from Animoca Brands — all within just 4–5 months of active community building.

5. From Testnet to Mainnet

Our goal for Testnet was to onboard 150K+ participants. As we transitioned to Mainnet, we launched TMA and introduced our partnership program at the perfect time, seizing the opportunity presented by emerging new narratives in the market. This, along with our collaboration with MemeFi, brought in 2M+ users. Although 90% of them were not highly relevant, but this boost was strategically important for metrics, negotiations with funds, partners, and exchanges.

6. From Mainnet to TGE & $1M Airdrop

The final stage led up to the TGE and the $1M airdrop release. Currently, the project has 22–25K holders, with:

• 18–20K on Arbitrum
• 4–5K on Ethereum.

Core Narratives

We started with Twitter and launched our Discord server within two weeks (by late January). Our primary focus was on building a Top-tier community hub, ensuring transparent communication with the team, and incorporating multiple engagement mechanics. A key part of this was a structured role system, which evolved throughout the project’s stages.

• Alpha contributor roles: Awarded to those who provided valuable feedback in the first two months;
• Early Beta tester roles: Tracked through on-platform activity and granted via internal developer tools;
• Role progression: Designed so that the most active members could eventually earn a special OG Xyro Clan role — which later became a key eligibility criterion for the airdrop;
• Tied roles to incentives: Roles led up to the free mint, allowing members to claim NFTs of varying rarity. These NFTs later boosted Testnet scores and provided extra points for the future airdrop.

Sounds complex? Maybe. But the key was consistency and clear progression, making the system engaging and rewarding.

But Main Narrative Focus: Airdrop & Web3 User Engagement.

From the start, our main narrative centered around the airdrop, which was essential for capturing the attention of Web3 users. In Web3, gaining traction without an airdrop — especially with limited budgets — was extremely difficult (this was before we had TMA and other cost-efficient traffic sources).

However, the building of the project came down to the following points, or key factors for the fundamentals of 2021-22, as I also call them:

🔹 For funds, the key factors were:

• A strong product with real traction (we presented Beta Test, Testnet, and Mainnet data)
• A proven team with a track record (e.g., winners of multiple hackathons)
• A thriving, engaged community throughout all stages.

🔹 For the community, we highlighted too:

• Successful test metrics and growth milestones;
• Team credibility and past achievements;

+

• Strategic investments from major funds and backing from industry leaders;
• Selective but powerful partnerships;
• Digitalization of the airdrop in community posts;
• Support from Tier-1 KOLs.

About Management

1.There was an overall strategy based on product stages mentioned earlier (+ we analyzed many projects that launched their TGE, for example, the eesee project).

2. Detailed monthly plans (broken down weekly) with clear goals — not only community numbers but also product metrics (like number of WLs, Beta Testers, NFT holders, etc.)

Example of a Detailed Monthly Plan

3. Then, we transformed all of this into a clear Weekly Gantt table

Example of a Weekly Gantt table

4. And based on the above, it was clear and easy to structure daily tasks. We managed communication and operations primarily in Telegram on a daily basis with community managers and 10+ other contractors.

Results

• Around 95% of all tasks were completed on time due to daily, tight management and the habit of each responsible person reporting on their tasks at the end of the day or during the day.
• Around 75-80% of the tasks from the monthly plan were completed, leaving 20-25% for flexibility and situational adjustments.

Therefore, consistent management led to consistent growth. From the strategy, we easily created the monthly plan, then broke it down into weekly tasks — making it simple to set up daily stand-ups.

+ Several Intermediate Cases

Next, I will present several intermediate cases, most of which focus on leveraging all market opportunities and utilizing new tools to boost community growth or product metrics.

a) Blastscore: How We Met Our KPIs During a Challenging Month

It wasn't a straightforward process — we were searching for new sources of high-quality traffic during a challenging month when our budgets were limited (around 2K USDT for activities and user acquisition). This meant digging deep, carefully reviewing tickets and various proposals.

That’s how we found a collab-manager from a newly emerging platform. During the Blast hype in March–April 2024, this platform managed to generate strong traffic with just a few campaigns. Our campaign was the third to be listed, and as a result, we gained 20K quality subscriptions across both the main account and the CEO’s account. Additionally, we were able to convert some of these users into Beta Test participants.

In the end, we exceeded our KPI goals.

b) TMA – For Accumulating Low-Cost Traffic in Telegram

During the transition from Testnet to Mainnet, we launched a TG mini-app (TMA) based on the platform and migrated part of the functionality to TMA. We implemented this at a very early stage when TMAs were just starting to emerge, and the entire launch process took no more than three weeks of development and testing.

As a result, we attracted over 1M+ MAU and 200K+ DAU. We also conducted 10+ collaborations with other projects and leveraged traffic from Telegram Ads and other networks.

By the end of the month, we successfully hit our KPI of 150K+ Testnet participants (with approximately 40–50% coming directly from Telegram).

c) Competitive Guilds on Discord – or Thousands of Valuable Actions for the Project

We built our competitive guild system directly on our Discord server, featuring a recruitment system and independent leaders. This engagement mechanic helped us attract highly active users who contributed valuable actions to the project daily.

For over three months, around 5–6 guilds competed regularly, earning Airdrop points and small USDT rewards. We structured weekly rounds focused on activities that benefited the project, including social media posting, guerrilla marketing, raids, video reviews, and more.

d) 5K+ NFTs with an impressive 86% unique ownership rate

During the free mint campaign leading up to the Beta Test, we organized a rapid hiring process — building not only a community department team but also a dedicated collab department with 3–4 collab managers. As a result, we executed 350+ collaborations, 30+ raids, and collected 13K+ DTC wallets.

Additionally, we carefully planned and implemented a verification process for WLs/community roles directly on the server using Subber. This allowed us to eliminate duplicate wallets in the free mint and filter out bot activity via API-based table checks. As a result, we achieved a case with 86% unique NFT owners.

e) 70K+ Twitter (X) and 0% bots

At the 70K+ mark on Twitter, we had 0% bots, as verified by the TweetScout service.

We also implemented many smaller cases in parallel. For example, when launching our first ad campaigns in Telegram, we optimized message formatting in TG Ads and other networks. In AdsGram, after adjusting the text and optimizing the ads, CTR increased from 2% to 8%, while CPC dropped from $0.30 to $0.06.

Other cases included daily engagement tasks (e.g., the challenge-me thread on our Discord server) and the launch of the Community Bro and Chat Helpers programs, which continue to actively support us to this day.

In summary, analytics show that around 5,000+ users spend a significant amount of time on the platform (session duration of 7–10+ minutes). We nurtured these core community members from the beginning — transitioning them from phase to phase, activity to activity, while maintaining their loyalty to the project.

They form the foundation that provided a strong initial push for the project and business.